Kecheng Fang 方可成http://www.fangkc.com
Communication ResearcherWed, 17 Oct 2018 20:51:05 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Made in China: a conversation on the ideas and principles behind CNPoliticshttp://www.fangkc.com/2018/10/made-in-china-a-conversation-on-the-ideas-and-principles-behind-cnpolitics/
http://www.fangkc.com/2018/10/made-in-china-a-conversation-on-the-ideas-and-principles-behind-cnpolitics/#respondWed, 17 Oct 2018 20:50:28 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=471Made in China is an open access quarterly (ISSN 2206-9119) on Chinese labour, civil society, and rights. In the coming months, CNPolitics will translate and feature a selection of Made in China‘s articles, making them available to a Chinese-speaking audience. As the founder of CNPolitics, I discussed the ideas and principles behind his initiative with Kevin Lin in the latest issue of Made in China.

Kevin: How did you start CNPolitics and what do you hope to achieve with this project?

Kecheng: I started CNPolitics when I was a political journalist at the Southern Weekly (nanfang zhoumo). In the early autumn of 2011, our political editor came up with the idea that we should publish something new in addition to factual reporting. He suggested that we could have a special column called ‘Political Views’ (zhengjian, which later on became the Chinese name of CNPolitics), introducing findings from scholarly research on Chinese politics. Soon after he proposed this idea, however, he moved to another magazine. I volunteered to be in charge of this new column. How did I prepare for its launch? Very simple: by posting a call for contributors on Renren, a now-defunct Facebook-like social media platform. A few students studying in overseas universities joined and prepared the first group of articles. But the column never appeared in Southern Weekly, because the censors by then were too worried about introducing ‘Western academic research’ to a Chinese audience. They asked us to feature only studies by scholars who are ‘officially recognised’ by the Party-state. Disappointed by this decision, we started CNPolitics as an independent project. We built our own website, and set up accounts on major social media platforms including Weibo, WeChat, Zhihu, and Facebook. The reason why I did not give up this project was that I believe—as you do with the Made in China project—in the value of introducing academic studies to the general public. There is a wall between academia and the public, and it is very unfortunate that academic studies, which are often supported by taxpayers, are not accessible to a public audience. We want to tear down that wall and bring the intellectual resources to a wider readership.

Kevin: We all know that writing about social issues and politics in Chinese for a Chinese- language audience can be very sensitive. Has this been challenging for you?

Kecheng: Of course, it is very challenging. We have articles that we never tried to publish. We avoid certain sensitive topics, and when editing I try to frame the articles in a less sensitive way, replacing certain words with ‘safer’ options. I rely on my own judgement, which is based on my journalistic experience in China. But we still make mistakes. On Christmas Day of 2015, our social media accounts were permanently deleted and our website was blocked in China. That was triggered by one sentence in an article on Syria: ‘Assad likes when people call him father, or Dada.’ We lost about 180,000 subscribers on WeChat, and about 80,000 followers on Weibo. Shortly after that, we launched our new accounts, but have not yet been able to reach the previous number of followers.

Kevin: How has CNPolitics evolved over the years in terms of form and content?

Kecheng: We constantly experiment with new forms. We produced infographics from 2012 to 2014 and they were hugely popular. We also have podcasts, short videos, and webinars. In terms of content, we recently expanded our scope to include not only political science studies, but also other social science disciplines; and to focus not only Chinese politics and society, but also more global and comparative studies. This is partly due to the increasing censorship under Xi—it is no longer sustainable to focus solely on Chinese politics.

Kevin: Finally, where do you think CNPolitics will be heading in the next few years? Do you still see some space for this kind of website in the current media environment in China?

Kecheng: CNPolitics is a volunteer-based project. Thus, we are limited in our capacity for expansion. In the current media environment, my best hope is for us to be able to continue to exist and provide content to the general public. We once discussed the possibility of turning CNPolitics into a commercial start-up project, but we found it very difficult due to the sensitivity of the topic and the fear that commercial interests would influence our content. The best-case scenario would have been for us to register as a non-profit organisation in China, but this is not possible under the strict new NGO regulations. Therefore, we will continue to run as a volunteer group. I do not mind if CNPolitics grows very slowly at the moment, as long as we are able to continue this project. The space for this kind of website is limited, not only because of political censorship, but also because of commercial competition. It is extremely difficult to get people’s attention in the current social media environment, particularly for operations such as ours with limited resources at our disposal. Ultimately, our goal is to continue reaching for a wider audience without compromising or distorting our content.

]]>http://www.fangkc.com/2018/10/made-in-china-a-conversation-on-the-ideas-and-principles-behind-cnpolitics/feed/0Reuters: Vaccine scandal tests Beijing’s grip on information controlhttp://www.fangkc.com/2018/08/reuters-vaccine-scandal-tests-beijings-grip-on-information-control/
http://www.fangkc.com/2018/08/reuters-vaccine-scandal-tests-beijings-grip-on-information-control/#respondFri, 31 Aug 2018 21:28:36 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=445I was interviewed and quoted in a Reuters article on the information control after China’s vaccine scandal in July 2018.

The enormous impact of the so-called “zi meiti”, or “self-media” article marks a threat to efforts by China’s ruling Communist Party to tighten its grip over content online.

“This is a guerrilla war. The government cannot tackle it just like it does traditional media,” said Fang Kecheng, a Chinese media researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, adding that while one zi meiti account could be shut down, many others would spring up in its place.

…

The rise of self-media, however, has created a new dynamic.

Media researcher Fang said Chinese authorities could now look to make their own use of zi meiti, having seen its impact.

“What people should be alarmed about is that after realizing how powerful this medium is, the government might use it as a propaganda tool itself,” he said.

Blockchain creations are still in their early phases, but Fang Kecheng, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication who hails from eastern Anhui province, is an early member of Zhang’s website. He sees blockchain as an invaluable tool to encourage content creators in today’s media environment. “Since last year, there has been a bubble around blockchain,” said Fang, referring to the boom and bust of cryptocurrency prices. “However, the potential of this technology itself will not be obliterated because of speculators. When there are more people who really want to do something meaningful with blockchain, this technology will not be wasted.”

But like media and communication lecturer Chin, Fang is skeptical about how effective blockchain can be for dodging censorship. “I think the real value of blockchain is not in preserving online content, because before blockchain, there was technology allowing people to do that,” said Fang, referring to tools such as digital archives.

]]>http://www.fangkc.com/2018/06/sixth-tone-how-blockchain-could-revolutionize-chinas-media/feed/0SupChina: Jordan Peterson And China’s ‘White Left’http://www.fangkc.com/2018/04/supchina-jordan-peterson-and-chinas-white-left/
http://www.fangkc.com/2018/04/supchina-jordan-peterson-and-chinas-white-left/#respondMon, 16 Apr 2018 00:31:07 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=447I was quoted in SupChina’s article on the popularity of the term “White Left” in China.

A recent talk by Fang Kecheng 方可成 offers the best examination of the term’s history and usage. In the talk, Fang says that “white left” is now widely applied to even those not particularly progressive or left-wing, and he includes the example of the Su Xiaohe 苏小和 essay “How the American white left has led Chinese readers into the gutter” (美国白左如何把中国读书人带到沟里 [měiguó báizuǒ rúhé bǎ zhōngguó dúshūrén dài dào gōu lǐ]), referring to both Ayn Rand and John Rawls as “gurus of the ‘white left’” (白左的宗师 báizuǒ de zōngshī). A couple of terms that Western readers might be familiar with, “social justice warrior” and “libtard,” get close to the way baizuo is sometimes used.

…

Fang Kecheng makes the point that the “anti-white left movement is largely driven by people that have gone overseas or are currently overseas.” Fang points to the power of Chinese workers in the Bay Area, in particular, and Chinese students in the United States and Europe in general.

]]>http://www.fangkc.com/2018/04/supchina-jordan-peterson-and-chinas-white-left/feed/0SupChina: How ‘Self-Media’ In China Has Become A Hub For Misinformationhttp://www.fangkc.com/2018/03/supchina-how-self-media-in-china-has-become-a-hub-for-misinformation/
http://www.fangkc.com/2018/03/supchina-how-self-media-in-china-has-become-a-hub-for-misinformation/#respondFri, 30 Mar 2018 00:34:53 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=448Like other parts of the world, social media platforms in China are also filled with misinformation. One unique aspect, however, is the role played by the so-called “self-media,” usually funded by venture capitals.

SupChina covered this topic and interviewed me.

“Sensationalist titles and stereotypes can always attract higher viewership, which can be converted into advertising revenues and investment,” says Fang Kecheng, the Annenberg PhD candidate.

…

A research team at MIT, after analyzing some 126,000 stories on Twitter over more than 10 years, found that false information consistently outperforms true information on Twitter in terms of its reach, its influence, and its speed of reproduction. “Ultimately, this is about media literacy,” says Fang Kecheng. “Until a day when people feel naturally repulsed by rumors and sensationalist stories, we need platforms to intervene and penalize self-media that spread misinformation.” Tencent, for its part, launched its official fact-checking account in 2017, and has already formed a partnership with the Center Against Overseas False Rumors. Last year, Tencent closed down 180,000 self-media accounts that post false rumors frequently and intercepted over 500 million rumors.

China has a highly regulated media market, where traditional and digital media are subject to different sets of rules. All traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio and TV channels) are state-owned. Although a large part of print media are called “market-oriented media” and rely on advertising revenues just as their counterparts in the West, they – including the outspoken ones such as Southern Weekly – nevertheless are owned by the party-state.

On the other hand, the most well-known and popular digital media, such as Tencent, Sina, Sohu, and Jinri Toutiao, are private or publicly traded companies. However, they are not allowed to hire journalists and publish original stories. They can only aggregate news stories from traditional media and state-owned digital outlets such as Xinhuanet.com, People.com.cn, and Thepaper.cn.

During recent years, there is an increasing number of “self-media” (zi meiti), which are highly influential on social media platforms including Weibo and WeChat. These “self-media” are mostly very small groups or even individuals who write opinion pieces or produce short videos. Like Maria Repnikova and I argued, although most of the content is light entertainment, bits and pieces of politics make it in that wouldn’t otherwise be found in traditional media.

How do new online media outlets compete with traditional state-run media organs?

Most of the commercial digital media are publishing some original content in a quasi-legal way – mostly on non-political issues including entertainment, sports, technology, and finance, or under the cover of “non-fiction writings.”

But the most competitive feature is not the content, but the fact that they own the major platforms. The news apps of Jinri Toutiao, Tencent, Sina, Sohu, and iFeng are ranked the top ones in app stores, and Sina and Tencent have Weibo and WeChat in their hands. As more and more Chinese read news on their smartphones, editors and algorithms of these commercial digital media overwhelmingly determine what Chinese people read every day. Not surprisingly, the state enforces strict censorship on them and punishes them when something sensitive is published. The state also imposes what I call “a super algorithm” on these platforms – the story at the very top of every news website and news app has to be about Xi Jinping.

Explain the timing of China’s new regulation of online news after the recent 19th National Party Congress.

The Cyberspace Administration has been issuing various regulations during recent years. I don’t see particular meaning in the timing of the two new regulations. Instead, I consider them the latest moves of the ongoing process of expanding the Cyberspace Administration’s power and jurisdiction. The process is driven not only by the top leader’s call for stricter control of the internet, but also by the Cyberspace Administration’s own interest.

These two new regulations represent Chinese authorities’ two main approaches in regulating the internet and social media – one by regulating people (other regulations in this category include hiring pro-government commentators and cracking down on liberal opinion leaders), the other by regulating technology and data (other regulations include requiring all internet companies operating in the Chinese market to store data in China and regulating the use of VPNs).

What is the function of “online moderators” in chat forums?

I guess you are referring to content censors. While China does have a large army of censors, online moderators are actually hired by every major internet company across the globe. The only difference is that online moderators in China have to monitor and delete information that is considered politically sensitive to the state, whereas those hired by Facebook and Twitter focus on violent and sexually explicit content. It’s important to note that, although online moderators in China take orders from the authorities, they are hired by internet companies rather than the government. Censoring politically sensitive information creates a heavy financial burden on these companies.

What is the impact of stricter state control over online news sources and more than 550 million Chinese consumers of online news?

It will be increasingly difficult to access foreign news sources from China. Domestic news sources will be increasingly homogeneous in the area of political news. But most online news consumers will not feel bored, because there is an unlimited supply of celebrity gossip, nationalistic pieces, and “chicken soup” stories on digital platforms.

]]>http://www.fangkc.com/2017/12/the-diplomat-chinas-media-market-competition/feed/0Sixth Tone: How Western Fake News Took Over China’s Social Mediahttp://www.fangkc.com/2017/04/sixth-tone-how-western-fake-news-took-over-chinas-social-media/
http://www.fangkc.com/2017/04/sixth-tone-how-western-fake-news-took-over-chinas-social-media/#respondFri, 21 Apr 2017 00:45:51 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=450(This is an Op-ed I recently wrote for Sixth Tone.)

In February, Wikipedia editors voted to ban the British tabloid the Daily Mail and its website as sources of reference in its entries. The decision was based on the news group’s “poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication,” which rendered its content “generally unreliable.”

While internet users in the Western world now stand a reduced chance of encountering the Daily Mail’s content, Chinese social media outlets — including microblogging site Weibo and social messaging app WeChat — are frequently abuzz with the tabloid’s stories. In fact, the social media feeds of millions of Chinese netizens are filled not only with translations of the Daily Mail’s stories, but also with a torrent of misinformation from the West’s now-ubiquitous fake news and conspiracy theory websites.

Last month, an article titled “Flock of Drug-Addicted Parrots Fight With Poppy Farmers” was upvoted more than 100,000 times on WeChat. The piece was a translation of another article that had appeared in the Daily Mail, which had republished a story put out by the Daily Mirror, a rival British tabloid. While the piece focused on a very real problem faced by Indian poppy farmers — that parrots routinely plunder their crops for food — its portrayal of an avian addiction epidemic was highly overblown and sensationalized.

“Man Who Leaked Hilary [Clinton]’s Emails Assassinated: Are They Killing People to Hide Information, or Is There Something Else Going On?” blared the headline of another translated article on Sohu, a Chinese search engine and news aggregator, after the fatal shooting of Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich in July last year. The piece, which suggested that Clinton could have been silencing those suspected of leaking emails, raised questions similar to those that appeared on right-wing conspiracy websites in the United States and elsewhere.

Further Chinese-language articles included the sensational claims that former President Barack Obama would refuse to leave the White House if Donald Trump won the election — an article originally publishedlast September by a satirical news site — and that WikiLeaks documents showed Clinton was selling weaponry to the Islamic State — a piece that was published in October by the widely discredited right-wing site Political Insider.

These articles — read by millions of Chinese Internet users — are only the tip of an increasingly disconcerting iceberg.

To be sure, the Daily Mail and American right-wing conspiracy websites are not operating Chinese-language outlets in China, though the Daily Mail does have an established partnership with Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily. The real force behind the massive importing from the Daily Mail and other such outlets stories is an influential — some might say notorious — group of social media accounts known as yingxiao hao, or “marketing accounts.”

These accounts are mostly run by start-up companies with a low number of staff. Due to constraints on time and labor power, they seldom produce original content or check their facts. Instead, they adopt a cost-efficient approach toward content production. Nearly every article they publish is translated and revised based on eye-catching stories in the Western media — usually tabloids, clickbait websites, and fake news sites. They don’t have permission to reproduce copyrighted content, but this doesn’t stop them from doing so on a vast scale, since it’s very difficult for Western media to track copyright infringement in another language.

Successful marketing accounts accumulate multitudes of followers from the content they share. As they do so, they start to advertise. Some of them even succeed in securing venture capital. “College Daily,” the account that published the aforementioned fake news articles about the 2016 American presidential election secured early-stage financing of 10 million yuan ($1.45 million) in February 2016. The business model of these accounts is thus straightforward: Lure in readers via clickbait and fake news, then sell users’ attention to advertisers.

For marketing accounts, traffic is everything, and quality and truth are nothing. That’s why they overwhelmingly choose to import sensational, controversial, or conspiratorial content from the likes of the Daily Mail and Political Insider, rather than from more serious and reputable sources. Even when they do import stories from, say, The New York Times or The Washington Post, they put a tabloid-esque spin on them, distorting their information. For instance, when Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, wrote a letter to readers after last year’s election saying that the paper had covered it “with agility and creativity,” marketing accounts recast it as a letter of apology in which the publisher “acknowledged that the Times didn’t fulfil its responsibility as an influential media outlet” and instead “became a cheerleader for Hillary Clinton.” Although the story was flat-out distortion, it went viral on Chinese social media, and most certainly increased the account’s value.

The commercial success of marketing accounts is facilitated by myriad factors, including other social media platforms also eager to increase traffic. The language barrier and the difficulty in accessing foreign news websites also help marketing accounts, whose readers are less likely to verify the information they read. Although some people in China are introducing fact-checking labels to fight the plague of fake news, their accounts carry much less influence than marketing accounts.

Ironically, although the Chinese government has issued a law saying that publishing false rumors that are then reposted at least 500 times can result in three years’ imprisonment, these fake news articles and conspiracy theories are mostly uncensored, the perpetrators who run them safe and rich.

When Daily Mail staff rack their brains to create clickbait, when Macedonian teenagers produce fake news about American politics and earn tens of thousands of dollars in the process, they probably don’t realize that their content is also flooding the social media platforms of the world’s most populous country, appropriated by Chinese social media accounts. The global flow of misinformation shows how clickbait and fake news goes viral in similar ways all over the world, yet it also reveals the unique characteristics of China’s digital media environment.

To combat China’s vast clickbait and fake news imports, domestic social media giants must follow their Western counterparts — including Google and Facebook — in developing algorithms and policies that suppress the diffusion of poorly sourced, overly sensational, or downright fabricated news content. Investors, too, must be encouraged to adopt a more socially responsible approach: one which not only seeks financial gain, but also brings about positive social change; one which improves our information environment instead of polluting it. But ultimately, it is internet users themselves who decide the fate of clickbait and fake news websites. If we equip everyone with stronger media literacy — namely, the skills of accessing, analyzing, and evaluating media content — China’s fake news articles won’t be worth the flimsy paper they’re printed on.

]]>http://www.fangkc.com/2017/04/sixth-tone-how-western-fake-news-took-over-chinas-social-media/feed/0Wilson Center: Hurting the Feelings of the Chinese Peoplehttp://www.fangkc.com/2017/02/wilson-center-hurting-the-feelings-of-the-chinese-people/
http://www.fangkc.com/2017/02/wilson-center-hurting-the-feelings-of-the-chinese-people/#respondFri, 17 Feb 2017 01:51:09 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=451A piece published in the blog of Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program quoted me:

By one count, the Chinese blogger Fang Kecheng found that, since its inception, the People’s Daily has used the phrase in reference to 19 different countries and organizations, ranging from the United States to the Nobel Committee and to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Of all the countries and organizations that had “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people,” Fang found that it was Japan that stood out as the worst offender. Beginning in September 1985, when an article criticized a visit by Japanese Cabinet Ministers to the Yasukuni Shrine, the People’s Daily had singled out Japan for “hurting the Chinese people’s feelings” on 47 separate occasions.

]]>http://www.fangkc.com/2017/02/wilson-center-hurting-the-feelings-of-the-chinese-people/feed/0Al Jazeera: Hunting tigers and flies: China’s media crackdownhttp://www.fangkc.com/2016/12/al-jazeera-hunting-tigers-and-flies-chinas-media-crackdown/
http://www.fangkc.com/2016/12/al-jazeera-hunting-tigers-and-flies-chinas-media-crackdown/#respondSun, 11 Dec 2016 02:06:14 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=455I was interviewed by Al Jazeera’s Listening Post to talk about the recent crackdown on media.
]]>http://www.fangkc.com/2016/12/al-jazeera-hunting-tigers-and-flies-chinas-media-crackdown/feed/0Business Insider: Monday’s presidential debate was censored in China — but that didn’t stop people from watchinghttp://www.fangkc.com/2016/09/business-insider-mondays-presidential-debate-was-censored-in-china-but-that-didnt-stop-people-from-watching/
http://www.fangkc.com/2016/09/business-insider-mondays-presidential-debate-was-censored-in-china-but-that-didnt-stop-people-from-watching/#respondThu, 29 Sep 2016 00:55:15 +0000http://www.fangkc.com/?p=452I was quoted in Business Insider’s story on how Chinese watched the presidential debate.

The Chinese government has one major reason for censoring the debate live-streams, according to Kecheng Fang, a University of Pennsylvania doctoral student researching Chinese politics and the founder of CNPolitics.org, an independent website on Chinese politics.

“Letting the public know how democracy works has its risks. People might start asking, ‘Why don’t we have our own debates?’ or, ‘Why can’t we choose our leader from the top two candidates?'” Fang told Business Insider.

Despite the Chinese government’s worries, most Chinese people are uninterested in the US election, don’t understand how it works, or have zero knowledge that a presidential debate is occurring, according to Fang. A niche population, composed primarily of elites, follow the election and the debate intently.